


brother, what's my name? (i'll tell you my name)

by insertcleveracejoke



Series: the hardest of hearts unhardened [5]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Hadestown AU, I love Patton, I might write a bonus with how Roman became one too, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Persephone is here but only mentioned, This is basically how Patton and Logan came to be gods, as is Deceit, i got overexcited sorry, i think this is the first fic of this story with more than one chapter, if I missed any trigger warnings please tell me, theres some subtle discussion about identity, theres some uhh implied violence but nothing graphic dont worry, this is in a style closer to the main series of this story than this sequel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-24 04:15:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18161342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insertcleveracejoke/pseuds/insertcleveracejoke
Summary: Patton had been a mortal, once. So had been Logan.The god of spring was only a mortal boy when Persephone found him.He hid behind his father- Deceit, he was called, he who had suffered a curse that covered part of his body and face in scales, an eye permanently yellow- as that woman who had eyes like flint and hands like those of a farmer crouched down in front of them with the closest to a gentle smile she could summon.





	1. but if you're like me

**Author's Note:**

> ATTENTION
> 
> Once more, the way Im writing this sequel does not follow a chronological timeline. 
> 
> This installment in special starts a few hundreds of years before It Was A Garden First. I would recommend reading that one again, and also Smiles and Threats, but it's not necessary to understand this one. The main premise, which was mentioned before, is that there were gods before Logan and Patton became Hades and Persephone but they became too tired and left the jobs for them, among others.

Patton had been a mortal, once. So had been Logan.

The old gods were tired. The ones who weren't followed the ones who were. The original Zeus lost his taste for harassing mortals and his hands couldn't tolerate the constant sting of his lightning bolts anymore, the responsibility of holding up the sky with words and authority instead of Atlas' broad shoulders, and ever loyal Hera followed him to the Earth. A too tired Hephaestus faded away into nothing, leaving Aphrodite free to run away with Ares. All of them, the old forces that kept everything working not like the gears in a mechanism but as a garden needs sun and nutrients and water to flourish, they were selfish and flawed and human, and the ones that still stayed knew that they wouldn't stay for much longer. They needed replacements so that the Earth could keep spinning.

Hades and Persephone weren't exceptions. Neither was Demeter. Fortunately, there were handy replacements not much further from the land Persephone used to know when she was younger and wilder. 

Patton was only a boy when she found him.

He hid behind his father- Deceit, he was called, he who had suffered a curse that covered part of his body and face in scales, an eye permanently yellow- as that woman who had eyes like flint and hands like those of a farmer crouched down in front of them with the closest to a gentle smile she could summon.

He asked if she was going to take his dad away. She wouldn't have been the first to try.

Deceit's hand on his shoulder had been firm like the jaw of a bear. Patton squirmed a little under it and didn't add his thoughts- that it wouldn't be totally unwelcome, if she did.

Persephone had smiled sadly, as if she understood. Perhaps, Patton would think, hundreds of years later, she did. And in his heart he would never forgive her for it. She knew. She knew how someone's parent could be like a hand around their throat and she still had only kissed his forehead and left.

"Good luck, boy", Persephone had said. "May the burden be lighter on your shoulders than they were on mine."

Patton didn't hate many people, but he came to hate her after a while.

If she wanted his burden to be lighter, she could've taken some from his shoulders herself.

He took her words to heart, though. And when the time came for her to wrap her own immortality around his shoulders (like a cape, like stones in his pockets), she left him a dress that he wore (like an uniform, like the wings of a bird, like a tree's leaves, like a prayer to a goddess that was no more.)

And Patton took the mantle of Persephone with light fingers and drapped it over himself.

He refused the name that came with it. Persephone was a woman with eyes of flint and smile sharper than a knife. She was Mother Nature at its finest, leaving its children to survive on their own or die, and he sworn to be a gentler hand than the one that had fallen on his other shoulder when she bent over to kiss his forehead. Most of the time, he succeed. 

Patton was a different person, but at his core, there was still Persephone. Her memories hadn't disappeared completely. She hadn't simply faded away with a stern-looking god holding her hand. There were still echoes in Patton's mind that he knew hadn't been lived by him and which were, still, undeniably his. He had seen the world begin. He had planted the first seeds that gave origin to the first flowers. Patton had been there, in some strange, strange way, even before he was born…

And he was, most definitely, not a mortal anymore.

It felt different. How could it not when flowers grew where he stepped?

(There was no right way to do this.)

How do you become a god? How do you- Patton buried his hands in dirt and looked up with eyes that were not flint but something just as hard under all of his soft edges. He walked on Earth and escaped his father's vigilant eye and made life grow where it was not supposed to, because he did. He survived his entire childhood and still smiled. If he could grow up to be a god, he could remind himself that he hadn't finished growing just yet.

(And cactus grew in the desert and Patton saw that it was good.)

(And plants grew where it was impossible to survive.)

In cold days when life refused to sprout from his fingers and something older than Persephone's memories and older than Patton's old resilience ached in his bones, he wrapped himself in her memories her power her smile and walked. Patton always walked barefoot. He brought with him life to the harvest and smiles to the faces of the hopeless.

(How do you do this?)

(How do you become a god better than the ones that came before you did?)

Patton grinned, a sharp, bloody thing, when Deceit tried to forbid him from walking away. He smirked and fell and let the plants that loved him absorb the impact of his fall. The god of spring laughed, wild and unrestrained by the seasons, hands full of flowers and teeth stained with blood. Try again, he said. Just you try to restrain me.

I am not the child you could hold back anymore.

(You try.)

(May the burden be lighter on your shoulders, Persephone had said, and Patton made it so.)

It was not easy, and he never managed to free himself completely before he had the support to, but it was still so much more than he had ever imagined he could get. Patton could have been under Deceit's power, but Persephone was free. The god of seasons was free. And there is no creation from mankind that can perfectly tame nature's wildness.

You can cut the trees and you can plant your wheat but as soon as you forget, nature takes its territory back.

And Patton took it back. Oh, he took it back.

Deceit claimed all the land that was under humanity's domain and Patton laughed. Who you think is making the grass grow on the side of that road?, he wanted to ask. Are you foolish enough to ignore the roots you didn't manage to kill? I'm still there. I'm everywhere.

Deceit claimed all human plantations and Patton claimed the forests, the woods, the plains, the mountains, the desert, the ocean, all the wild and lonely places where life could not grow and then he made it grow there anyway. Mine, he wanted to say, all of Earth is mine. You do not get to keep me away unless you want to live in a barren, lifeless land.

Then he took the lifeless land too.

(Deceit never once noticed what Patton had done until it was too late for him and sacred plantations were burning all around them.)

Logan was not as different from him than most thought. Patton gave him a glance and he knew that they both were made from stronger stuff than most mortals and gods. There was something in the metal of his eyes that made Patton want to wrap those arms around himself like he had wrapped Persephone's last blessing. Logan was the steel for Patton's iron.

(And yet, he fell for the softness of those hard eyes.)

(The gentleness of those hands holding him, the kind smile, the love in that shy expression was in some ways so much more relevant than the steel.)

May the burden be lighter on your shoulder than it was on mine, Persephone had said, so when Deceit tried to get him back Patton went out and burned most of it to the ground. If no one else was going to do it, he would.

Oh, Logan would have, if he asked. But there were some things you had to do yourself. And Logan was, in some ways, gentler than Patton was. He had the potential and the power for cruelty, but not the heart. Being deliberately cruel would have broken him in a way that it did not break Patton.

To his surprise, he could thrive on cruelty. The memory of Deceit's horror did not make him guilty, did not disturb his dreams at night in the way the outpouring of souls in the Underworld had done. It did not become part of his burden. Patton knew then that he had the potential, the power, the heart for cruelty. He considered the idea with absentminded curiosity and then promptly locked it away in the darker corners of his mind that he did not visit.

(Patton was a kind god.)

(He could have been different.)

(He didn't want to, and that was all the difference that was needed.)


	2. the heart of the king loves everything

Logan was found with his brothers and sisters.

To his secret delight, he was not the last one to be found. This stern man in a sharp black suit had actually chosen him first- something in Logan's usually serious expression had given out his natural inclination. Hades had pulled him aside while the other gods negotiated with his parents.

It would take Patton a long, long time to tell him about Persephone's words. Logan hadn't hidden what he thought about them compared to her actions, but Hades' words had been- something else.

"No matter what", the old god had said, "it is your duty to keep the city standing."

So Logan did.

(Stones in his pockets, shackles around his ankles- you've heard this before.)

He didn't have a father like Patton's. His own parents were nice enough, if completely out of their depth when trying to deal with a bunch of kids newly turned gods. Logan spared a few moments to wonder if he would miss them before he methodically packed all of his things and disappeared in the night.

Logan was the last one to go besides the sister that would become Hestia. She was the only one of his siblings that he was truly fond of, and he whispered her a goodbye before fading away in the darkness.

The shadows welcomed him like an old friend. In some ways, he was. Logan had always found the dark comforting in a way that most people did not, and Hades' memories suggested that the old man hadn't disagreed with his point of view. More than that, he felt almost part of them now. As if his body could become pure shadows if he so desired.

It took him mere minutes to figure out that it could.

A different boy would have been terrified. Logan looked at the shadows swarming over his limbs and smiled, absolutely delighted by how well hidden he could become. He had been the middle child- he was used to feeling invisible, but it had never been on his own terms before. The darkness enveloping him felt like a heavy blanket wrapped around his shoulders while never slowing his movements or suffocating him, and Logan fell in love.

(Most people think Patton was his first love. In some ways, that is true.)

(But in a very different way, the moonless night that he had created with nothing but his will had been loved dearly by him a few hundreds of years before Patton had even ventured into the Underworld.)

Logan could have disappeared in this night without stars, taken a few years to get used to the way the shadows felt like silk and smoke under his touch, but Hades' words rang in his mind like an alarm and he didn't shake the darkness off as much as he used it as his first bridge.

Here's something he never told Patton until Virgil and Roman became theirs: He loved and hated the Underworld at first sight.

It was nothing but a barren land with multiple small villages spread all over, and Logan despised the way it looked so desert. It was nothing. It was an abandoned anthill. There was no style at all and the new god felt a little cross that this was the state of his land. 

(Although, the darkness that covered all like a starless sky and the quiet- if not silence- of the Underworld, the newfound peace he found in standing on his own ground, lifeless and barren as it might have been…)

(Logan loved, loved, loved it with a silent passion.)

He rolled up his sleeves and got to work.

With each step Logan stood straighter, taller, more confident. This was his. This was all his. Not his birthright, but something deeper, older than that- something that had seen the world begin and end before Logan was even conceived. An old, hoarse voice kept whispering in his mind: mine, mine, mine.

Mine, mine, mine, Logan thought as well, a faint smile in his face, and started to organize the Underworld. This simply wouldn't do. 

The villages were unified into one single town, bigger than most cities on the surface would be in a hundred of years. He raised the darkness with one hand, higher, higher, until mortal eyes could deceive one into thinking there was a true sky- but not for long- he could not do anything about the barren land, but he wished…

Logan built himself a house made out of a material darker than the night and felt satisfied in his heart that this was how he was going to spend eternity.

Until he met Patton.

(Patton, sunlight in the Underworld, flower of the dead, kind and beautiful and lovable…)

(Logan had fallen in love at first sight with him, too.)

(For many reasons- the kindness in his eyes, yes, and his beauty, and his smile, and just the way he carried himself, as if the entire world was his playground. But also because he did what Logan could have never done for the Underworld.)

(He made life grow in it.)

Logan would make many mistakes in his long, long life. He would not hesitate to admit to any of them, given enough time. One of them was listening to Hades' words for so long. Keep the city standing, the old god had said, and Logan had never really thought of making it thrive until Virgil and Roman were supposedly going back to the surface and Patton and he could finally be honest with each other because of their shared heartbreak.

Keep the city standing, Hades had said, and Logan stayed. A less dutiful god might have followed Patton to the surface, might have visited him much earlier, might have- but Logan had been a dutiful boy and then a dutiful god and then a dutiful husband as well. (It only then occurred to him that he never got to grow to be a dutiful mortal man.)

Mortal man, mortal man, Logan had called Roman, and sneered, and felt secretly envious. The singer was lively in a way that he could not be. He was alive. Logan had forgotten what it felt like to not know where you would be a few years from now- he had forgotten to fear the death he wore like a mantle and a crown. The Underground was all grey and black. He had forgotten to wish for other colors. Once upon a time he had desired a land with more life and then he had never asked his own husband for what he did best…

Keep the city standing, Hades had said, and Logan told the darker, older part of him- yes, I will. In my own terms this time.

You are dead for a reason, old man.

And maybe one day Logan would grow tired, too. Maybe one day he would look at his territory and feel nothing but exhaustion and resentment. Maybe one day Patton's smile would not be enough. Maybe his bones would feel the weight of the thousands of years he had seen, his eyes would grow glassier, his hands would grow weaker. He would leave Roman and Virgil behind, then, Logan was almost sure. They were young enough as deities to carry on after him…

Right now, though, he watched Patton create life from nothing, watched Virgil design a new crown that meant even more than his old one, watched Roman compose songs that broke the quietness of the Underworld without breaking its peace, and Logan thought he would not hate to live forever.

(Mine, mine, mine, a voice whispered in his ears, and now it was only his own.)

(He used that to help all that he loved thrive.)


End file.
